Distinct constitutive and low-CO2-induced CO2 uptake systems in cyanobacteria: genes involved and their phylogenetic relationship with homologous genes in other organisms.

Cyanobacteria possess a CO(2)-concentrating mechanism that involves active CO(2) uptake and HCO(3)(-) transport. For CO(2) uptake, we have identified two systems in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803, one induced at low CO(2) and one constitutive. The low CO(2)-induced system showed higher maximal activity and higher affinity for CO(2) than the constitutive system. On the basis of speculation that separate NAD(P)H dehydrogenase complexes were essential for each of these systems, we reasoned that inactivation of one system would allow selection of mutants defective in the other. Thus, mutants unable to grow at pH 7.0 in air were recovered after transformation of a DeltandhD3 mutant with a transposon-bearing library. Four of them had tags within slr1302 (designated cupB), a homologue of sll1734 (cupA), which is cotranscribed with ndhF3 and ndhD3. The DeltacupB, DeltandhD4, and DeltandhF4 mutants showed CO(2)-uptake characteristics of the low CO(2)induced system observed in wild type. In contrast, mutants DeltacupA, DeltandhD3, and DeltandhF3 showed characteristics of the constitutive CO(2)-uptake system. Double mutants impaired in one component of each of the systems were unable to take up CO(2) and required high CO(2) for growth. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the ndhD3/ndhD4-, ndhF3/ndhF4-, and cupA/cupB-type genes are present only in cyanobacteria. Most of the cyanobacterial strains studied possess the ndhD3/ndhD4-, ndhF3/ndhF4-, and cupA/cupB-type genes in pairs. Thus, the two types of NAD(P)H dehydrogenase complexes essential for low CO(2)-induced and constitutive CO(2)-uptake systems associated with the NdhD3/NdhF3/CupA-homologues and NdhD4/NdhF4/CupB-homologues, respectively, appear to be present in these cyanobacterial strains but not in other organisms.